Future Panel

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April 23, 2013 |
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Getting politicians, scientists and stakeholders together at an early stage to discuss a specific topic opens up the debate and hopefully leads to more robust policy making. In the PACITA project, a Future Panel is dealing with the challenges related to public health genomics.

‘A future panel requires visionary thinking that crosses the boundaries of different sectors, spheres of competence and professional disciplines’

Public health genomics is a clear example of a topic with governance implications across many spheres. “It touches on transnational issues such as data sharing and informed consent, as well as the clinical validity and utility of genomic tests,” explains André Krom from the Rathenau Institute in the Netherlands. It’s also a method that aims to create a long term engagement with a topic and the issues under discussion. Over a two-year period, several opportunities are created for the feedback of results between politicians, policymakers and the scientists. Even better, there are opportunities for constructive interaction.

Members of a future panel are selected on the basis of their political status. They are current members of parliament in national member states, and importantly, their political responsibilities must include the topic under discussion.

As coordinator of the future panel on public health genomics, Krom sees major benefits in including members of parliament at an early stage. One of these is that parliamentarians provide direct input into the research process. Maintaining close ties between policy and research enables the research output to be fed back into the policy making process. “Of course, we hope that our future panel members can act as ambassadors of the issues raised by developments in the field of public health genomics in their respective parliaments,” explains Krom, “but members of parliament do not have to do the job entirely on their own”. In line with the idea of expert-based policy-making, members of parliament are joined by colleagues from the clinic, the lab, the market, and by experts covering the ethical and legal aspects of public health genomics. “Part of the PACITA methodology is to combine the insights of politicians with those of policy-makers and scientists,” says Krom.

The members of parliament can contribute real issues that arise from their daily political environment. Consequently, scientists will interpret these as being closely connected to what is considered to be relevant from a policy-making perspective. But this method is not without challenges. For instance, members of parliaments are often responsible for other, potentially conflicting, topics. The transition from ‘public health genomics’ to ‘the public debating health genomics’ needs deliberation but it’s a transition that should be acknowledged, according to Krom: “In my opinion, it is clear that the broader public should be included at some point. If we are talking about public health genomics, we are talking about using genomics to protect or promote the health of the (broader) public.”

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The emerging field of Public Health Genomics intends to integrate genome-based knowledge and technologies into public policy and into health services.
Further information on the PACITA Future Panel can be found on the PACITA website.
More information on how future panels work is available from the Danish Board of Technology.

Text: Adele Flakke Johannessen.

Photo: iStockphoto.

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volTA magazine

volTA was a magazine on Science, Technology and Society in Europe, initiative of fifteen technology assessment organisations that worked together in the European PACITA project aimed at increasing the capacity and enhancing the institutional foundation for knowledge-based policy-making on issues involving science, technology and innovation. It was published between 2011 and 2015 in 8 numbers.